Integrating Techno-Economic Optimization and Life Cycle Assessment to Evaluate Carbon Intensity and Economic Potential of Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery in Alberta

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🔬研究者:Provides a systematic meta-analysis and integrated TEA-LCA framework for CO2-EOR, highlighting methodological choices that significantly affect carbon intensity results.

🏢実務担当者:Offers insights on optimizing CO2-EOR project economics and identifying low-carbon intensity barrels, useful for corporate sustainability and investment decisions.

🏛政策担当者:Demonstrates how carbon offset pricing and operational performance drive storage potential and economics, informing carbon pricing and CCUS policy design.

Carbon capture, transportation, and utilization for CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) presents a promising approach for utilizing anthropogenic CO2 while increasing oil production. However, despite extensive research on the life cycle carbon footprints of CO2-EOR over the past two decades, inconsistent methodologies yield widely varying results, limiting their reliability for policy development. This thesis addresses these methodological challenges through a systematic meta-analysis, an optimization-based techno-economic model, and an integrated techno-economic and life cycle assessment framework to enhance the robustness and Alberta relevance of CO2-EOR evaluations. Chapter 2 performs a global systematic review and meta-analysis of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies examining greenhouse gas (GHG) emission factors from CO2-EOR systems utilizing both natural and industrial CO2 sources. A comprehensive workflow—screening, eligibility review, data validation, and parameter harmonization—standardizes critical background inputs, with particular emphasis on electricity-grid emission factors (Scope 2). Economic allocation and system-expansion (substitution) quantify cradle-to-grave impacts across the multi-product supply chain. Statistical analysis shows that electricity consumption correlates more strongly with gate-to-gate emission factors than net CO2 utilization, and no meaningful correlation appears between electricity use and net CO2 utilization. The choice of allocation methodology emerges as the dominant determinant of well-to-wheel results. Venting and fugitive contributions range from 2%–90% of harmonized gate-to-gate emission factors across the reported studies, underscoring the need for standardized monitoring. Chapter 3 builds upon and improves an existing techno-economic analysis (TEA) model to determine optimum reservoir-specific hydrocarbon pore volume (HCPV) injection rates that honour injectivity constraints and to calculate the corresponding cumulative HCPV injected over the flood life, thereby evaluating Alberta’s basin-wide CO2-EOR potential under multiple economic scenarios. The enhanced model integrates technical data from over 10,000 vertical wells and lithology-based permeability estimates. It also introduces economic refinements such as optimized CO2-EOR flood life. The model incorporates potential carbon offset price and availability (allocated to the operator), and operational performance statistics from 31 West Texas CO2-EOR projects. Sensitivity analyses demonstrate that project economics are highly responsive to the oil price, CO2 offset pricing, and field-level operating metrics such as CO2 retention and incremental oil recovery. This study thus enhances the applicability of the improved TEA model to Alberta’s unique geological and economic context, enabling a more granular and realistic assessment of CO₂-EOR deployment potential. Chapter 4 evaluates the Well-to-Refinery gate (WtR) emissions potential of CO2-EOR development in Alberta through an integrated techno-economic and emissions assessment framework. The analysis examines 2,950 technically screened field-pools by combining the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE) with a techno-economic assessment (TEA) model, incorporating varying economic and operational parameters. Spearman rank correlation analysis identifies key drivers of emissions variability, finding that oil production rate, project before-tax net present value, and the gas flooding injection ratio are the strongest correlates of WtR carbon intensity across the screened pools. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that methodological choices, boundary definitions, and underlying assumptions critically shape CO2-EOR evaluations. Specifically, the analysis finds that: (i) at US$75/bbl WTI and a C$50/t offset, Alberta’s technically screened pools support ~ 1 Gt of CO2 storage and ~2.2 billion bbl of incremental oil, with 50% of 637 clusters achieving before tax net present value discounted at 10% >0; (ii) the volume-weighted break-even net field-delivered CO2 price averages ~C$58/t, and aggregate BTNPV is ~1.5x more sensitive to a US$1 change in WTI than to a C$1 change in net CO2 price; (iii) storage potential is highly concentrated—about 57% resides in 10 clusters—so shared infrastructure and unitization meaningfully lower unit costs; (iv) operational performance is the dominant driver of storage (~0.4-2.0 Gt across P10–P90 envelopes), and high offset values (≥ C$120–C$170/t) shift value toward storage while leaving oil volumes relatively inelastic; and (v) the lowest-CI quartiles tend to coincide with stronger project economics, enabling regulators and investors to prioritize low-CI barrels without sacrificing returns. Together, these insights guide Chapters 3 and 4, provide practical guidance to optimize CO2-EOR designs, target clusters with the greatest system-level impact, and align policy instruments with verifiable storage and low-CI production in Alberta.

• openaire https://doi.org/10.11575/prism/50485first seen 2026-05-05 19:06:39